This City Life: Through the Eyes of Children Das Stadtleben: Durch Kinderaugen

Thursday, June 21, 2012, 10:30 am–3 pm

While most children live in cities today, understanding, questioning and experimenting with the urban environment rarely plays a part in most primary- and secondary-school curricula. This workshop proposes one way of encouraging children and young people to engage with their immediate urban surroundings. As urban investigators, children will make a podcast headphone tour of a local street, engaging with processes of research, interviewing residents as well as each other, capturing urban sounds and sharpening their senses to recognize and analyze the particularities and defining characteristics of their immediate urban surroundings. The workshop outcomes will be compiled as an archive of sound files and hand-drawn maps, facilitating an exchange of thoughts between workshop participants, their educators and the local public, but also between young people in different cities and countries around the world.

Cameron Stevens is an Australian primary-school teacher with an extensive background in the arts and media who currently teaches at an international school in Berlin. In Australia, Cameron has established a successful and very enjoyable career as a cultural educator, working within the educational departments of cultural institutions such as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and Art Play. In his last position in Australia, Cameron managed the education department of Australia’s largest public space, Federation Square, which housed cultural facilities such as the National Gallery of Victoria and SBS, the country’s largest multicultural broadcasting station.